In Him
by DreaminDaze
Summary: All these years and Kate still can't figure out what she loves about him. Established Caskett. Please read and review!


For those of you waiting for an update for Life Line. I'm very sorry, but I've encountered a bit of writer's block. I'll get the next bit up as soon as I finish writing it. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this little idea that wouldn't let me go until I wrote it.

As always, if you feel so inclined, please leave a review on your way out. Thanks!

Also as always, I own nothing.

* * *

**In Him**

It's the writer in him.

Sometimes when Kate comes home after a long day at the precinct, well after midnight and asleep on her feet, she finds Rick fast asleep on the couch. She knows he won't go to bed without her and Kate dreads having to disturb his slumber, and she's starving so she decides to let him sleep a few more minutes. Keeping her tread light, knowing Alexis is asleep as well, Kate makes her way to the fridge. That's where she finds the first note.

It's small, stuck to the fridge with the cheap souvenir magnet from Kate, Rick, Alexis and Martha's trip to the Bahamas in the summer. She expertly slips the small, pale green square, Kate's favorite notepaper, out from beneath the magnet and unfolds it.

_Alexis and I cooked your favorite. Check the oven. _Followed by one of those squiggly hearts and smiley faces.

Kate smiles, tucking the note into her pocket - she must have enough to paper their bedroom by now - and retrieves her linguini from where it's been keeping warm in the oven, setting it down on the kitchen counter. She can't quite bring herself to sit down at the dinner table without him, much like he won't go to bed. Her fingers land on another green square and Kate doesn't bother to suppress the smile. Ever since she mentioned how much she loved this shade, he uses only this paper.

_How's your dinner? Have you made New York safe again? I missed you all day. Tomorrow, whatever case it is, I'm coming in. Okay?_

She eats as quickly as she can because she can't wait for them both to stumble into bed and cuddle up together. He'll whisper to her and ask how her day was. And she'll reply that it was crazy, but much better now that they were finally together. It'll only take seconds for them both to be asleep again. The comfort is so close that Kate abandons the rest of her dinner and hurries over to the couch where soft snores are emanating. Stuck to his nose with clear tape is another note, moving up and down with his breaths. Kate leans down close to read it.

_Wake me up. I didn't mean to fall asleep before you got home, but it makes the hours without you go by faster. Still, Kate, too slow. _

Her heart quickly melting, she pulls the note off and replaces it with her lips, first on his nose, then to his cheek, finally his lips. Rick's eyes flutter open, but just barely - just enough for him not to trip over his feet as they shuffle to the bedroom.

It's the writer in him, Kate thinks. As she tucks her head under his chin, he pulls the covers up close and throws an arm around her waist. It's the writer in him that makes him leave these silly little notes. Almost nothing to other people, but so thoughtful and so sweet. Falling asleep in his arms, Kate thinks that it's the writer in him that makes her love him.

* * *

It's the damaged in him.

Almost two years dating and six months of living together, and Kate has yet to learn all his secrets. She knows that he's as guarded as she is, although the humorous façade he puts up is much more effective at concealing it. When something is bothering her, she'll be brooding and quiet. When something is bothering him, he'll tell bad jokes and smile like it fools anyone. But Kate can see through him, and on those occasions she's learned a good many of his secrets, enough to know that Rick Castle is damaged too.

Kate's always known that she, Alexis, Martha, and the boys at the precinct are the extent of his family. Famously fatherless, Rick turned his lack of paternal guidance into a selling point for his books. There was something about being fatherless that allured the readers, and that made the writer seem all the more mysterious, as though he came from nowhere and was borne from the very heart of his stories. Kate never thought he minded, until one day.

After a day of weak jokes and even weaker smiles, over a year ago, Kate had followed Rick into their bedroom, prepared to interrogate some answers out of him. She found him kneeling on the floor of his walk in closet, seemingly looking at the wall. A minute later she realized that he had retrieved a box from a self made hiding place in the wall and proceeded to sit down on the floor, lifting its lid gently.

She'd taken a place next to him, and looked on quietly when he didn't ask her to leave. He took out a stack of pictures, one by one; each of them featuring a very young Richard and a man she knew was his father. Awed and curious, Kate had watched the boy in the pictures age, through birthdays, Christmases and snowy winter afternoons, until the pictures stopped abruptly. Imploringly, she'd asked him to tell her.

Tell her what? He'd replied.

Anything. _Everything. _

And he had.

He told her _his name._ He told her the way he had walked away when Rick was 9. And he told her that he had never seen him again.

It was only two weeks later when they got the call from the hospital. A heart attack, the doctors told them in the waiting room, and Rick was listed as next of kin. It was one of the worst days of his life, and when they got home that night, Kate held him for a long time, after Alexis and Martha had finished with their words of solace.

She grasped his hand when the tears started to fall; for all the moments he missed; for all the words the writer didn't get to put on paper or articulate; for the relationship he never got to have. She almost drowned in his pain, but in the end she managed to swim them out of the undertow.

It's the damaged in him, Kate thinks. It's the broken parts of him he allows her to see and the person he can be in spite of him. On the days where he is not quite alright, Kate thinks it's the damaged in him that makes her love him.

* * *

It's the fighter in him.

She felt it one night when they were in bed together. As her hands swept over the broad planes of his chest, her finger brushed an imperfect patch of skin, tougher and different than the rest. She pulled back immediately, looking more critically at the scar. It was rounded and silvery, evidence of a story she hadn't heard before.

He told her of a brief stint in the army, when he was 19 and didn't know what he wanted to do with his life yet. And he told her about the stray bullet he caught in the shoulder. She eyed him almost critically, being shot there, she told him, would impact his range of movement so much he shouldn't be able to write with that hand, cook with that hand, hold her with that arm. So, he told her about the year of physical therapy that followed.

Kate told him he was lucky. A few inches to the left and he might not be sitting here today. He held her tighter and said _they _were lucky, because he wouldn't be sitting here without her either.

It's not his only brush with death, that scar on his shoulder. From day one, shadowing her at the NYPD, Rick has been fighting. Frequently in danger and too often in _mortal_ danger, by some force beyond Kate's control, he's gotten them both through. Sometimes she likes to believe that that force is simply him.

Fighting is not an easy thing, Kate knows, having done it too much in her lifetime. Fighting yourself is trying enough, but she can't imagine having to fight the one you love. And she has watched Rick fight for her.

He beats back her demons whenever he can. And when he can't and they make an unwelcome appearance, he helps her defeat them. He's had to fight her fear of this relationship, her reluctance to put her heart up on the line, her hurtful words that she's flung in self-preservation. And somehow he's fought through them all.

He's had to fight terrorists, serial killers, bombs, thugs, shooters, predators, and freezers alike. And somehow he's fought through them all.

When they make love now, Kate seeks out that scar on Rick's shoulder specifically. Sometimes she kisses it extra reverently, drawing a deep shiver from within him. That scar is the start of an uphill battle that ended at this point in their lives, the top of the hill, them together.

It's the fighter in him, Kate thinks. It's the way he can't give up. Not won't, _can't._ She leans into him after a shootout at the precinct, where Rick had used his way with words and acted as the hostage negotiator. He fights in his own way, but Kate thinks it's the fighter in him that makes her love him.

* * *

It's the father in him.

Dating Castle is like gaining a boyfriend and a family, Kate thinks. The mini Castle is a constant presence in their lives, and Kate swears the teenager is wise beyond her years. Maybe even wise beyond her and Rick's years. But not all the time. In fact, Kate remembers an occasion where she took the back seat, and watched as Rick was the parent in his and Alexis's relationship.

It was the night of Alexis's first high school dance, before Ashley. Both Kate and Rick had been consulted on the dress she was going to wear, the way her hair would look, and the boy she was excited to go with. When he called and told her he changed his mind, and that he was going with another girl instead, to say Alexis was upset would have been an understatement.

As Alexis bolted back up the stairs and practically tore the dress off, Kate was at a loss for what to do. But Rick knew. In their pajamas, the three of them went out for ice cream that night, stuffing their faces with the most delicious frozen treats in the city. There was a small booth, barely enough room for them, and sundaes and floats spread out across the entire table.

After a while, when they couldn't eat anymore, Rick drove them to a small convenience store and purchased a carton of eggs. Alexis directed them to the mystery boy's house. She also threw the first egg. Kate watched, astonished as Castle winked at his daughter, picked up an egg and tossed it at the house from their hiding place behind a tree, missing horribly. Alexis giggled slightly and threw another, missing again. Kate didn't miss.

That night, when they got home, Alexis quietly said that she had been looking forward to dancing. Without a word or a second thought, Rick turned the radio up, where a slow song was playing just for father and daughter, grabbed her hands and captured Alexis in a dance.

A bit later on, when Alexis fell into a fitful sleep, Kate found Rick sitting outside her room, an ear pressed to the door. As Kate approached, Rick shushed her and gestured awkwardly that he listening for sounds of crying. His actions touched Kate deeply.

It's the father in him. Sometimes, as they all sit around the dinner table, Kate wonders if someday they'll have a child of their own, a piece of herself and the writer she's fallen in love with. Without a doubt, it would be the luckiest child in the world. It's the father in him, Kate thinks, that makes her love him so much.

* * *

It's the child in him.

Kate has never met someone quite like Richard Castle. She's amazed that he's managed to keep a part of himself unbruised, unscarred - safe in the confines of childhood. It's that part of him that lets him lick cake batter off the spatula without a second thought, dress up and play laser tag with his daughter, and propose to tell Kate a bedtime story when she can't sleep. A part of him remains so innocent, eyes wide open and amazed with the world. Kate has taken it for granted more than once, but not anymore. Now she knows how important this little part of Rick is.

It was Sunday night in the precinct, after the longest week of everyone's lives. At the end of a case with so many pitfalls they were all beyond dizzy, Beckett, Ryan, and Esposito sank into their desks, too discouraged to say much. The murder of a 7 year old boy dumped in the river led them to the wet, shallow graves of 4 more. With no suspects, 5 dead children, and a highly publicized case, the detectives began their wild goose chase. And that was only Monday.

After two days of dead ends, they found a solid lead on Wednesday, a shifty looking man with ties to all of the unfortunate children. That was when they still had faith in their detective skills, when they thought they could get a confession easily, when they thought it was open and shut. This was Sunday, when they realized they weren't going to break him, they didn't have physical evidence, and he was going to walk.

Castle looked between the three crestfallen detectives and to the Captain, sitting in his office on the phone, undoubtedly with some higher power expressing their disapproval. Ryan and Esposito looked like they wanted to drink themselves into a stupor and never wake up. And Kate, she was fiddling with her mother's necklace around her neck in a way that could only mean she was thinking of all the times she's failed. Castle decided right then that he had to do something.

It took him a while, but eventually he talked all them into accompanying him to the river, where they found the first boy. Once there, he produced the photos he'd collected from their case files. The cold wind blew water into their faces as he explained. They may not catch the killer today, but there'd be tomorrow, and the day after that. No matter what there'd always be another tomorrow. Kate and the boys remembered being touched by the flame of optimism he held for them in the dark, and they knew it was only possible because of the vestige of innocence he preserved. They sent the five photos of the boys floating down the river. Two weeks later when the lab came through and they had physical evidence to go on, they caught the killer. Rick had smiled and told them that he _told them_ so. Everyone rolled their eyes and went about their day, but Kate could tell all of them had taken a lesson from a child - how to hope.

It's the child in him, Kate thinks. When she finds him wedged in between the washing and drying machine and he insists he just playing hide and seek with Alexis, happiness courses through her veins and she feels an undeniable urge to join him. As they waste hours laughing about the silliest things, Kate thinks it's the child in him that makes her love him.

* * *

It's the lover in him.

They've only had one fight. Well, no. They bicker all the time - like a married couple, Alexis tells them all the time. But they've only really _fought_ once, and that one time Kate learned how huge a capacity for love Rick has.

She kicked him out of her apartment after the first time he told her he loved her. They'd been lying in bed, his arm beneath her head when the three little words slipped out. Against her will, the walls around Kate closed in, smothering her, and when Rick looked over with that adorable grin, she couldn't help that panic that rose in her throat. Love her? She wasn't ready.

Quickly, she gathered up his clothes and handed them to him, barely allowing him a second glance as he dressed. She had courtesy to apologize for not being able to love him before snapping the door shut in his face and, as she'd hoped, to the turmoil in her heart. He pounded on her door for a good hour, begging her to let him in. He just wanted to talk, Rick said. No, she replied, it's too hard.

The next morning she found him asleep outside her door.

As she swallowed the lump in her throat, she studied his day old stubble and the somber expression he wore even in his sleep. She hated herself for making him that way. As the door fell away from beneath his body, Rick leapt up and Kate took a giant step back. She expected him to yell at her, perhaps stay angry a long time, to ignore her. At least, that had been her plan when she kicked him out the night before.

Instead, he moved in quickly and gathered her up into his arms. She apologized, over and over. Sorry for throwing him out. Sorry for being her. Sorry she didn't know what to do now.

He only hugged her tighter, whispering right away that he forgave her, and that he would wait for her, as long as she needed. When she worried he would move on, he _promised_ that when she was ready he wouldn't love her any less. He could never love her less than this much, he grinned, stretching his arms out as wide as he could.

It's the lover in him. It's how Rick can give everything to everyone, and still have enough to go around. It's how he doesn't think with his brain, or his heart. Rather his brain _is_ his heart. As she walks down the aisle to him, and his sparkling eyes and handsome smile, Kate knows it's the lover in him that will make this last.

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What did you guys think?


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